


The World Was Burning (and I Burned with You)

by FujinoLover



Series: We're Perfect for Each Other (You're Gonna Figure That Out Someday) [3]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: AU that's not really AU, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Platonic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 08:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10382685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FujinoLover/pseuds/FujinoLover
Summary: For her, he was an array of colors—like a rainbow (and she happened to be very gay).For him, she was red.





	

It happened when Harold didn’t expect it.

He had more pressing matters to worry about. Like Alicia Corwin who was driven by paranoia and cornered him with a gun trained at his chest. Like the number that was on her way to him and might end as collateral damage. Like the FBI _and_ HR that went after Mister Reese. The thought of soulmates wasn’t even in his mind.

After Nathan and Grace, he had stopped thinking about his soulmate altogether. He did his best to fix the flaw, using computers and books to keep himself informed. His latest invention had solved the problem. He only needed to make it less complex and easier to use, like glasses or even contact lenses connected with a wireless receptor that stuck on the scalp. He would try fitting all the necessary parts on his spare glasses later—that was, if he survived Alicia.

His soulmate entered his life with a loud bang and Alicia was no longer a threat.

It was horrifying. His ears were ringing and he was left panting for the air that had been knocked out of his lungs in surprise. He had jerked back when Alicia’s body dropped forward from the force, her head leaning on the side of the dashboard and blood leaked down her neck. He couldn’t look away from the gruesome sight because the liquid that trailed down her skin wasn’t inky black like usual. It was brighter, thicker, scarier—it was _red_.

“I thought she’d never shut up.”

He recognized her—the number, Caroline Turing.

“So nice to finally meet you, Harold.” She grinned at his look of disbelief. She leaned forward, pointing him with the gun she just used to kill Alicia. “You can call me Root.”

Despite his situation, realization downed on him. “You hired HR yourself,” he said with a grimace. “You were willing to risk your own life to find me?”

“I did this corporate training thing once.” The smile never left her lips. “I was blackmailing the CEO, long story, but they did this exercise called ‘the trust fall’, where you close your eyes—“ she did as she said, trusting that he wouldn’t try to grab or knock the gun and she was right, he didn’t “—and fall... And wait for someone to catch you.” Their eyes met. She stared at him as though he was her whole world and her smile widened. “I knew you boys wouldn’t let me down. Come on, Harold. We’ve got so much to talk about.”

With the majority of the population is colorblind, the world has conditioned itself around it. People relies more on their hearing and sense of smell. When sight is absolute necessity, such as in wiring, shapes are tweaked and items labeled as a mean to differentiate similar things. He had only imagined what it was like to live in a world full of color, to be the rare three percent like Mister Reese and his fellow government agents who weren't born with the defect (and thus got recruited) or the lucky one percent like Grace, who earned the ability along with puberty.

He was never fond of the notion that meeting a certain person would fix him and when he did, he hated it.

He hated _her_.

“I don’t know who you think I am but you’ve made a mistake.”

Root shook her head. Her lips were a lot paler than Alicia’s blood. “Don’t treat me like them.” She glanced at the people around them with disdain. “It must be like talking to ants to you. They wouldn’t grasp what you’ve done even if you’d told them, but I’ve been waiting for you my whole life,” she said with such conviction that brightened her black eyes. “And you and I share an understanding.”

What he hated the most was that deep inside, buried untouched in a dusty corner of his mind, he too had been waiting for her.

“To me...you’re a murderer and a thief.”

His insult did little to affect her. “My mom told me to follow my talents and I’m good at what I do,” and she went on.

He avoided looking straight at her—at the glow of her skin that wasn’t another shade of gray or _really_ white and at the soft red dusting her cheeks. She showed him that life wasn’t black and white with splashes of gray—life was full of vibrant red that hurt his eyes with its brightness. He had to squint, many times casting his gaze elsewhere because it reminded him of her and the terror she brought.

His soulmate was red and she terrified him.

 

* * *

 

He remembered Grace describing her hair color as auburn. _It’s red but darker_ , she had said as he touched the soft tresses. It was black for him, but it didn’t stop him from staring in wonder. He had always longed to see it for himself, now he did and it took his breath away.

“She’s lovely, Harold.”

Chill ran through his spine when the voice came behind him. Even after months of their first encounter and Bear helping him dealt with the trauma, fear still wrecked through his whole being. He whipped his body around, came face to face with the ever-smiling Root, and a new color entered his perception.

“Honestly, I don’t know how you can stand to live without her.”

Grace’s scarf was red, Root’s...wasn’t. The color was somewhat less aggressive. Green or blue was next in line, so he paid attention to the grass and when they remained black, he figured the new color was blue. It was soothing, but not enough to calm his racing heart.

“You try to harm her in any way—“

“I don’t want to hurt Grace. I’m not a sociopath, Harold. Believe me, sometimes I wish I was. The things I’ve had to do would’ve been so much easier.” He wasn’t convinced, so she continued, “I don’t like taking live, but I will. Because I believe in something more important. I believe in your machine.

“Tonight, at midnight, when the virus reaches zero, a certain payphone will ring with the most important call in history. But you already knew that, didn’t you? I think Decima knows about it too. They’re trying to crash it, Harold. Trigger a hard reset. When that happens, The Machine will call a payphone. That’s what you coded it to do in the first place, didn’t you, Harold?”

His expression hadn’t betrayed him, but she had been saying all the right things and she wasn’t discouraged by the lack of response.

“Whoever answers that call will have full administrative access. Ask any question, get any answer. The world’s secrets laid bare,” she said, breathless and flushing with emotions. “Decima doesn’t want to destroy your machine. They want to control it. But together, we can save it, Harold.” She glanced over his shoulder. Her smile had an undertone of unpredictable madness on it. “Or I can go meet Grace for coffee.”

He followed her changing line of sight and it landed on Grace, who was all the way across the street, checking on her phone, waiting for someone, oblivious but safe. He would do anything to keep her that way—Root knew this.

“She thinks I write children’s books,” she whispered near his ear, like the devil she was. “You can either save Grace and The Machine, or you can lose them both.”

He made up his mind when she already walked past, bringing the blue with her. “If I go with you, Miss Groves.” His words stopped her on her track in an instant. He hated the smug smile she sported. She thought she had won, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight. “You will _not_ kill anyone.”

“Please, Harold, call me Root.”

Damn her and her knowing smile and the way she kept hacking his mind and saying all the right things to say. Damn her for being right since the beginning. Damn her for giving him the ability to see colors.

Damn her for being his soulmate.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t hate her anymore, but he was still wary of her. He had done his best to help her, kept her away from being killed by the government and admitted her to a psychiatric facility where she could recuperate in safety while also getting whatever help she needed. The Machine was free; she already got what she had wanted. All he wanted was for her to leave him alone.

He thought she did when she escaped Mister Hersh. She was gone, no trace of her anywhere. He was okay with not knowing the complete array of colors, he already seen more than what he was born with anyway.

He saw green when he found out that she kidnapped and formed a partnership with Miss Shaw.

It was literal green.

(No, he wasn’t jealous. He was _worried_. Because while Mister Reese did reckless things every now and then, Miss Shaw wouldn’t feel anything about whatever she did. Either, or even both women could end up hurt or worse, _dead_.)

When the mission was over and Miss Shaw piggybacked her to the Faraday cage in the library and told him to _put ice on her face to keep it from swelling up_ as she left, was when he realized that she wouldn’t go anywhere. It took a long time for him to accept it. She was still red, but she was also blue and green and every shade and tint of all the possible combinations in-between. She had always been a brilliant woman, but now she was also his comrade—his _friend_.

She became everything she had said she would and in an odd way, she was the most fun too.

By the time they had to hide in plain sight and he lived in the subway while she shed identities every couple of days, he had identified all color available. About ten millions of color recognized by human eyes and black, gray, and white no longer dominating his vision even though John, Sameen, and even Root herself preferred to don themselves in black.

His world was no longer bleak, but it didn’t last and it was his fault.

Somehow he knew—something in him just _knew_ that she was gone. The unsettling feeling in his gut had began and intensified since the cops took him away from her. He was worried, upset, _angry_. Sameen was the one diagnosed as sociopath, but he was never good at expressing his feeling either. He felt in such intensity that scared himself of the catastrophe that would happen if he ever acted on it, so he reined it in. It was simply irrational and he always prided himself for being a rational person.

However, with each second ticking while he was being held in a federal prison and the limited colors available in his surrounding started to bleed back into black and gray, his control over his emotion slipped. He had been stewing for a while and the clueless agent with gray skin and black eyes talked about records of records and things he had no idea about. The mention of his father almost broke his control, but the way the agent used information of her—on _his_ _soulmate_ ’s condition to bribe him to talk, was the last straw.

He already decided to kill Samaritan, he just didn’t know how many of his own rules he was going to break to get it done.

He had refused to acknowledge it on his way back to holding. It was government’s facility. Colors tended to excite non-colorblind prisoners, so they kept everything in different shades of depressing gray. It was for psychological reason, nothing more. He didn’t want to hope— _hope is painful_ , he had told her before—but he was only human. When the payphone rang and he picked it up and heard her voice, he was overwhelmed by joy and a bit of disbelief but also relief and—

“ _No, Harold. I chose a voice._ ”

On the day the world went away, he saw red for the last time.


End file.
